down goes England, crumbling into the dust!--Let
us lunch, my friends. The cuisine is still good here."

Nigel excused himself.

"I am engaged," he said. "We may meet afterwards."

"Something tells me, my dear Nigel," Karschoff declared, "that you are
bent on frivolity."

"If to lunch with a woman is frivolous, I plead guilty," Nigel replied.

Karschoff's face was suddenly grave. He seemed on the point of saying
something but checked himself and turned away with a little shrug of the
shoulders.

"Each one to his taste," he murmured. "For my aperitif, a dash of
absinthe in my cocktail; for Dorminster here, the lure of a woman's
smile. Perhaps he gains. Who knows?"

CHAPTER XVIII

Nigel waited for his luncheon companion in the crowded vestibule of
London's most famous club restaurant. He was to a certain extent out of
the picture among the crowd of this new generation of pleasure seekers,
on the faces of whom opulence and acquisitiveness had already laid its
branding hand. The Mecca alike of musical comedy and the Stock Exchange,
the place, however, still preserved a curious attraction for the foreign
element in London, so that when at last Naida appeared, she was
exchanging courtesies with an Italian Duchess on one side and a
celebrated Russian dancer on the other. Nigel led her at once to the
table which he had selected in the balcony.

"I have obeyed your wishes to the letter," he said, "and I think that
you are right. Up here we are entirely alone, and, as you see, they have
had the sense to place the tables a long way apart. Am I to blame, I
wonder, for asking you to do so unconventional a thing as to lunch here
again alone with me?"

She drew off her gloves and smiled across the table at him. Her plain,
tailor-made gown, with its high collar, was the last word in elegance.
The simplicity of her French hat was to prove the despair of a
well-known modiste seated downstairs, who made a sketch of it on the
menu and tried in vain to copy it. Even to Nigel's exacting taste she
was flawless.

"Is it unconventional?" she asked carelessly. "I do not study those
things. I lunch or dine with a party, generally, because it happens so.
I lunch alone with you because it pleases me."

"And for this material side of our entertainment?" he enquired, smiling,
as he handed her the menu card.

"A grapefruit, a quail with white grapes, and some asparagus," she
replied promptly. "You see, in one respect I am an e